Jon Shapley

Statement

I use paint, photography, collage and other media to reflect concerns surrounding how spaces and places are created, used and relate to one another, and how the people that inhabit these spaces affect and are affected by their design. I am particularly interested in the in-between, the difficult to describe and the transient, and issues associated with borders, surveillance, control, movement and equality.

I have recently been working on a series of pieces that consider the shadows cast by objects or materials, removing the object itself so that only the shadow remains – a sort of reference to transience and the passing of time, and the marks or impressions that are (or are not) left behind which can contribute to our reading of space and place.

Current work continues this theme but focuses more on the margins and the marginalised, the borders that are encountered depending on where we are from and where we are going, and the layers that make up our landscapes, be they urban, rural, or something other.